Robin of Berkeley on liberal vs. leftist Jews and Obama
Robin of Berkeley makes an important distinction between liberals and leftists. And it is hardly limited to Jews.
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
Robin of Berkeley makes an important distinction between liberals and leftists. And it is hardly limited to Jews.
I hold the same view, it’s not limited to the Jews…
The very heart of liberal’s view of life is a juvenile protest against life’s essential inequality.
Leftist’s are the elitist’s of the left (the right has their elitists too) whom Jefferson warned of;
“Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties:
1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes.
2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not [always] the most wise depository of the public interests.
In every country [and time] these two parties exist, and in every one where they are free to think, speak, and write, they will declare themselves.” —Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, 1824.
Okay, there’s a difference.
What difference does the difference make?
The difference is that there’s hope to persuade liberals to change their views, whereas there’s little hope of doing so with most leftists, at least in the short term. (The “Eldridge Cleaver effect” only operates, if at all, on the multi-decade timescale.)
I’m working on a friend of mine, an ardent well-meaning liberal and fervent Obamanaut, but one who is troubled by California’s financial woes, which he attributes in large measure to the public sector unions.
So I chip away on that notion, and on the desirability of fiscal probity, a notion to which we both subscribe, waiting for him to figure out the second half of the problem: the Democrat-controlled legislature that plays pat-a-cake with the public sector unions.
Leftists are generally a waste of time to work on. Any change on their part requires a Damascene conversion that has to well up internally.
I just finished watching an outstanding German movie about life in leftist workers paradise, The Lives of Other People (also called Other Peoples Lives). It deals with conditions in East Germany before the fall. Cliche or not it is one of those movies that opens ones eyes about the blessings of freedom that we take for granted. It is something young people should see in order to appreciate the lies they are going to hear in college. It is also one of the most horrifying films I ever saw because it really happened in a modern first world country.
As for leftist Jews; ever wonder why there are so many Jewish psychologists? Obviously to fulfill a need, business follows the market. I remember one Rosa Luxemburg wannabe who had just returned from cutting sugar cane in Cuba. She was overjoyed at being able to help the revolution (I somewhat doubt she came back in a raft). As Tatyana noted, she needed an opportunity to bring out her inner lackey. Although everyone lauds freedom it really is not for everyone. Some people yearn to be slaves, to find comfort in control and being controlled. We find out how many next November.
her explanation is completely ignorant of history…
she is still pretending to be a liberal intelligentsia who can look at something and make all kinds of false distinctions and make up some reason that sounds very good to all the others who are equally ignorant.
its what i see constantly, and to those that know history, the details and all that, her stuff sounds INANE
read her and she sounds like a anthropologist who has to come up with everything from just watching.
so she ticks off facts and things and with very limited sample, and a whole lot of personal anecdotal experience (which depending on past or present was colored differently when she took it in).
you are seeing the same false distinctive argument that tries to separate communism and socialism.. they are the same thing, so any distinction is false.
all variations on the theme of row row row your boat, still are row row row your boat. the differences are not meaningful enough to declare row row row version 1 not row row row your boat.
same with the other synonomics around collectivism.
a better distinction or description using her labels, would be Liberal jews are the useful idiots with a personal version of the ideology in their heads where they have personally removed the parts they dont like and still believe they are part of it.
to use catholics as an example, a catholic that pushes abortion rights, is not a catholic. they are someone who has decided to unilaterally (for themselves) rewrite what it means to be catholic, ignore what it ACTUALLY means, and through this personal version, be a member of a club that they would not otherwise be (quoting another marx who was funnier). in this way, they feel that if they follow their own version, they can still partake of sacriment.
problem is that they are all protestants claiming to be catholic, for no better reason that they want to be tought of as catholic, even if eveyrone doesnt get that they ahve their own special version.
same thing with berkleys thing.
the red diaper baby is fully cognizant of the ends, and ratehr than have a personal version which allows them to participate in something they would normally oppose, they are fully invested and do not need a personal version to allow them participation.
there is absolutely no difference between the two as far as material outcome is concerned, and THATS THE POINT thats real. whether the horse goes to the right or left because the reign was pulled, or because it was spooked, or because it was slapped or stabbed at the right time, or wears blinders, is IRRELEVANT (except to the damn horse)
the idea that these internal personal logical ideas and missives actaully mean more than the material movement is why you dont get how they pull this all off.
but it answers the problem of how to get a mass of cats to hold ideas that allow them to move the same way when you want them to.
we all belive that a good thing will be sold and merit and by that a large enough group will make it be.
but thats not so with state slavery, so instead of trying to build a mass by one idea, you build lots of variations of row row row your boat, adn each group will identify with that, and fall into that group, WHICH IS A PART OF THE MATERIAL WHOLE… (which they control the power of that whole).
no under group has enough power alone to oppose it, because they weild the power of the whole as if it was a singularity a class, a mass.
you all think its different if one cat appears in the zone because it smells fish, and another wants sex, and another just likes to be with other cats.
all that is irrelevant (except to the cats), to the ideology, they are all standing in the same circle and the ideology gets to vote their power.
Bob, I visited East Berlin back in the day, and a more oppressive atmosphere cannot be imagined. (The contemporary USSR and PRC were Disneyland by comparison.) East Berliners knew that a mile away people were living much better lives, and their resentment was palpable.
But as oppressive as the atmosphere was in East Berlin, the drive back through the DDR to the FRG was worse. The highway was flanked by electrified barbed wire fencing, and dotted with checkpoints where stone-faced guards with submachine guns demanded passports. One guard would take the passports into a concrete blockhouse with silvered windows, while another would run a mirror on a stick under the car, all the while the guard with the submachine gun stood glaring just outside the driver’s door. Long minutes would pass, while submachine gun guy watched us as impassively as a cigar store Indian to see if we would get nervous. (We did.) Finally, the blessed passports reappeared from the blockhouse, and we were waved on, relief washing over us as we drove off.
Only to do the same thing again further on. And again. Each one we thought was the last, until with sinking hearts we noticed the insulators between the barbed wire and the fence. Finally, no more insulators. We were in the FRG.
By that time, I needed a stiff drink.
The DDR represented the last stop on the road to socialism; the only way to get people to put collective interests before individual ones is coercion. Absent coercion, socialism necessarily fails.
Occam’s,
I saw the border facilities right after reunification when they were empty. They were still intimidating. We stayed in a foreign students’ residence across the street from the Nicolaiskirche in Leipzig. The cheesiness of the place was unbelievable. The rubber stopper in the bathtub was attached with the kind of plastic thing we use for attaching price tags. The whole time I kept wondering how this affected the craftsmen who knew quality work from shoddiness and were capable of producing quality. It seemed like another example of robbing people of their souls.
OB: just recently an online friend from Israel wrote about the oppressive atmosphere he experienced as an 8yo in East Berlin. His parents moved there from Moscow, as I understand; it was 1970.
There were ruins, actual empty shells of buildings, leftovers since the War, right in the center of the city, surrounding the populated streets. Everything – gray and brown, “practical colors”, concrete and bare-bones. Unfriendly, unsmiling, inhospitable. Sorry, I can’t find his post now (there is no search window), so I might remember details wrong, but that was the general impression.
Bob: you remembered! thank you; what a nice thing to read. Today I needed a bit of positivity.
Yes, I was struck by that too. I was in East Berlin a few months before the Wall fell, and was shocked at how many bombed out buildings remained. Whole districts (IIRC) looked as though allied air forces had just left an hour earlier. Amazing. Also buildings (just garden variety ones, not just those of historical import) commonly featured pockmarks from bullets.
The strangest thing was watching the guards at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in East Berlin…goose-stepping. Clang. In all, a bizarre place.
Another striking observation in East Berlin was the demeanor of the people. Everybody seemed honked, everywhere, all the time. No one smiled, or seemed friendly or well-disposed. They all looked as though were on their way to or from divorce proceedings.
On trying to order a meal, I was told entree #1 was out. How about #2? Oh, that’s out too. OK. How about #3? No? (I got the picture by then.) OK, so bring me whatever you do have.
To drink? Trying to avoid a repeat of the entree fiasco, I look around and see someone with a lemonade, so I order that.
“Das is nur fuer die Kinder!” the waiter bellows accusingly at this typically heartless capitalist bastard. Sorry. My bad. (Who knew?) I end up with an ersatz soft drink that tasted like a Coke in which someone had soaked his jockstrap after basketball practice.
The waiter returns with the cutlet of some unidentified species (I notice no strays around…you don’t suppose…nah), slams the plate down such that the cutlet slides off the plate onto the table. I delicately maneuver the cutlet back onto the plate (Amy Vanderbilt neglected to address how one does this gracefully) and proceed to eat, washing down the meal with my Chateau Malathion.
Life was good in the DDR. Hurry back now, y’hear? Right.
OB: you crack me up. We in the USSR were incredibly envious of life in Eastern Bloc; it was “abroad” for us – and oh so glamorous…
On the topic: I’m not entirely convinced by Robin’s article; the distinction between liberals (Am.) and lefties exist, but it is one of quantity, not of quality. In principle they are all statists.
On her other thought – about popular opinion blaming it all on the Jews – again, when was it different?!?
In Bush’ years fingers were pointing at “neocons”, just like Stalin in the 50s pointed his crooked finger at “cosmopolites”, and in 1920s, just like now, an average Joe equals “a Jew” with “Communist”, as well as “secular Jew”=”leftie radical communist Jew”
Even in the threads on this here blog I’ve met this novel opinion.
In Soviet Russia of the 80s it was popular to recall WWI cry “Jews sold out the country!” – incidentally, a whispered joke countered it with “OK, then. I’m a Jew – but I have bubkes. I’m still waiting for my share!”
So what’s new?
Occam, expat…
I have tried to talk to what others would think are very intelligent people of some standing… and yet, the truthful empirical evidence you can say, is water off a ducks back.
i said can you imagine your life so not good, that one day, while walking, you noticed that you MIGHT be able to get through, and you take it. its so bad you leave family, friends, home, familiarity, language, money, and are willing to run to a armed set of people who you have been told most of your life are more evil than what your running from…
how do you describe purposeful living conditions so antithetical? that knowing it could be different and this was by design and ego, purposeful?
neville chamberlain sold out the slovaks to appease hitler.
time for something very interesting and historical…
i wonder what would have happened if he wasn’t an evil capitalist, or do we know once we read the story?
(sir) Nicholas Winton
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/Winton.html
as i said in other threads, and especially any that bring solitary focus to A.F. forgetting (while claiming not to) and never giving any cover (leaving it in isolation) to what is hundreds of very important other lives NOT the darling of political groups.
Total border length around West Berlin: 96 mi / 155 km
Border between East and West Berlin: 27 mi / 43.1 km
Border between West Berlin and East Germany: 69 mi / 111.9 km
Border through residential areas in Berlin: 23 mi / 37 km
Concrete segment wall: 3.6m (11.81 ft.) high, 66 mi / 106 km
Wire mesh fencing: 41 mi / 66.5 km
Anti-vehicle trenches: 65 mi / 105.5 km
Contact or signal fence: 79 mi / 127.5 km
Column track: 6-7 m (7.33 yd) wide, 77 mi / 124.3 km
Number of watch towers: 302
Number of bunkers: 20
Persons killed on the Berlin Wall: 192
Persons injured by shooting: ca. 200
The first concrete elements and large square blocks were used first on August 15, 1961. Within the next months the first generation of the Berlin Wall was build up: a wall consisting of concrete elements and square blocks.
A second Wall was build in June 1962 in order to prevent from escaping to the West.
The first Wall was improved during the next years and it’s difficult to distinguish between the first and the second generation of the Wall.
These two first generations were removed by the third generation beginning about 1965. The third generation of Wall consisted of concrete slabs between steel girder and concrete posts with a concrete sewage pipe on top of the Wall.
From the year 1975 the third generation of Wall was replaced by the fourth generation. New concrete segments were used which were easy to build up and were more resistant to breakthroughs and to environmental pollutions.
the reason i put that all up is to give you an idea of how serious they get on this. this is why i scoff at those (a majority) who say or act as if the living there wouldn’t be a problem or that they would just leave. or when people here say that they cant compel people.
Occam… were they compelling?
for others just do a search on escape from east germany into you tube… you will find lots of stuff, good and awful. but with little effort you will see film clips of people on the west side with blankets trying to catch people who were jumping out of windows.
everything happened in reaction terms. the thing started as a zone, and with rail service. then made harder by a wall, and check point. buildings then were used to get through, so they bricked up the first floor. people jumped the second. they bricked second and third, people jumped from the fourth. they bricked then eventually razed them. sewers were used… then they were blocked.
over time people tried to hang glide across..
even a hot air balloon…
EAST-WEST: The Great Balloon Escape
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947451,00.html
Mechanic Hans Peter Strelczyk, Bricklayer Gunter Wetzel, their wives and four children.
yes children…
read about Winton above and how parents seeing what was coming and knew would hand their children over to people..
in hungary during mass starvation women threw their babies in trains hoping that they would be found on the other side of the border… (the massacre was in the winter, and they sold the food to the west)
so these people were willing to take their children with them and what they could have in a balloon.
In June an East Berlin engineer, while piloting a glider, suddenly changed course and rode thermal currents across to the West. In August a Dresden family stole a plane; though none of them had ever flown before, they managed to steer the craft across the border to a safe crash landing. Earlier this month, a driver assigned to U.S. Ambassador to East Germany David Bolen hid his family in the trunk of the envoy’s official car, drove uninspected through “Checkpoint Charlie” and got political asylum in West Berlin.
makes it kind of depressing what we have to watch on TV given that there is all this real history and stories that make james bond look like a pansy.
(at least he had training, these are regular people)
Amy Vanderbilt neglected to address how one does this gracefully
Amy Vanderbilt never lived in utopia
Oh yes.
One of the chilling things was the realization of just how serious they were. The guards didn’t point their submachine guns directly at me, but close – more like at the windshield (you had to stay in the car). Not to be melodramatic, but it occurred to me that if I accidentally popped the clutch these guys might conceivably just hose down the car with their submachine guns. Let’s face it — it wouldn’t have been the first time. The Grenzpolizei played for keeps. (Also a Grenzpolizei officer who didn’t shoot would doubtless have had a lot of fast talking to do if someone escaped.)
I also understood why people would risk their lives to escape. Imagine being condemned to spending your entire miserable life in line at the DMV. It’d be easy to get to the point of just saying “Eff it” and go for broke to get out or die trying.
Never been to Cuba, but people braving shark-infested waters in inner tubes to escape tells me all I need to know. Free health care, my ass.
Tatyana, I think the problem is that Jews are so strongly identified with extreme left-wing politics. In fairness, that association is not without foundation. From Karl Marx to Rosa Luxemburg to Leon Trotsky to the Rosenbergs to Abbie Hoffman to George Soros, there is a disproportionate involvement of Jews in extreme left-wing politics. So it’s not really fair to disparage people for noticing this, and I don’t think most people would dispute it. It is what it is.
We need non-leftist Jews to speak up more, because they’re definitely below the radar now. Frankly, I’ve never met a politically conservative Jew in person. Ever. It’s heartening to learn that they exist!
I was in West and East Berlin right *after* the Wall fell. East Berlin was indeed a hole in the ground… practically literally. Dust everywhere in the streets from the brown coal they burned. Incredibly filthy. Yet there were still students talking about if we could only do Communism the right way….
Of course even in West Germany they lacked things we in the US take for granted. Like orange juice. I would have thought they could get that from countries like Spain. Who knew?
Also stayed at a friend’s condo type unit in Munich. It was built right after WWII, and you had to literally fire up a boiler in the kitchen or bathroom to get hot water.
I read somewhere the quip that the reason North and South Korea have never reunited is because Germany went first.
They don’t get it – any system works if you do it the “right way,” or have the “right people.” Hell, dictatorship/ monarchy works under those circumstances, in fact, rather better than representative democracy.
The problem is in “doing it the right way,” and/or getting “the right people” to do it. Sooner or later, any system gets the wrong people doing it (no offense, Buraq), or people doing it the wrong way (ditto). That’s the test of a system.
It’s kind of like marriage: the test comes when things are tough, not when they’re great.
here is a disproportionate involvement of Jews in extreme left-wing politics
There is disproportionate involvement of Jews into everything, from medicine to finance to information technologies to philosophy to law to theological studies – and into politics.
We get involved, you see.
And we are dedicated people…once involved, we persevere. That’s in the genes: if we quit, we’ll die.
Frankly, I’ve never met a politically conservative Jew in person. Ever.
Are you asking me to dinner? *faints*
Neo: This is a truly troubling post. Every since the Hungarian uprising in 1956 I have watched and lived in “workers’ paradises” all over the world and wondered just how deluded people can be. Apparently there’s no end to the delusion that is possible, as all around the nomenklatura declaring their path to shangri-la the peasants live in horrible conditions. And even where they don’t (Berkeley, for example) the contradictions are evident. I have friends with whom I just cannot talk politics — it is so clear they believe fervently in the lies they are being told. I have been hoping that Obama’s time in office would serve to teach Americans the mendacity of this system they pursue with such fervor; alas, I am convinced now that when Obama finally steps aside for the next elected president (assuming that does happen) there will still be a sizeable number of Americans who believe we only just barely missed out on paradise on earth. F
Ah, politics in general, but not conservative politics. That’s the point. Who’s the conservative Jewish equivalent of Soros? Of Peter Lewis? Of Trotsky? Of Abbie Hoffman? Of Andy Stern? Of the Pritzkers? Of Streisand? The distribution is not symmetric. The point was that knowing that a person is a Jew allows one to make a pretty good guess at his politics. That’s not prejudice; that’s simple observation. C’mon, admit it — when you meet another Jew, you assume he probably voted for Obama, just as when you meet a black. True? It’s not a calumny, just simple probability.
Sorry, can’t do that. Happily married here!
True, and troubling in that anyone over the age of reason could ever entertain the notion of paradise on earth. This is it, guys — for better or worse. Looking for something earthly outside of yourself, your friends, and your family to give your life meaning is a fool’s errand.
I don’t know about converting libs very easily.
Neo tells us, when she began, that much of it was in her personal identity, not entirely what could be thought of as an organized view of how things were working.
No matter how strong the evidence, to accept it meant you’d have to become one of THEM.
IMO, it isn’t facts, it’s personal identity and an associated inability to see facts; wishful thinking taking the place of serious analysis.
Hard to say which comes first, but it appears they are mutually reinforcing.
So laying out the facts of borrowing money won’t work. “What about the….?” fill in the first victim group that comes to mind, manatees, maybe.
OB – you never invite women acquaintances to your family dinner?
OK, seriously, to answer to your question: no, I never assume he/she is a liberal, because my circle of communication is pretty well weeded down to people I can relate to. Also, other Jews I meet are usually of Russian-Jewish origin, from the same immigration wave, and if I happen to be mistaken, I never communicate with that person again. Even in my online network (non-professional – which I keep separate and do not disclose my political views, as a rule. With exceptions.) I tend to exchange comments with people of similar political standing (including Jews) and I quiz new acquaintances fairy extensively before I make a next step closer. Simple.
As to why there are/were more socialists among Jews – I think we covered that topic pretty extensively here – not in this thread, but in many previous ones.
Tatyana, I pretty much do the same thing: gradually feel out someone’s views, until I’m pretty sure they’re simpatico, before dropping shields. (In my dotage, I’m not into arguing with people.) The question is the likelihood of …uh…simpatico-ness.
Richard, converting ’em is never easy, but I’m too stubborn not to try. /g
The guy I mentioned is of Scandinavian descent, a bright, sober, prudent, responsible, hard-working, an early-to-bed early-to-rise farm boy. He personally would never adopt the fiscal policies of the Democrats, any more than I would, and for the same reasons. He’s already (quite apart from my arguments) strongly opposed to borrowing and spending money California doesn’t have. I’m working on him — ever so gradually — to grasp the incommensurate nature of his political and economic beliefs. He’s a great guy, and I believe that there’s a solid conservative in there trying to get out, so I’m in for the long haul.
OB, the likelihood of simpatico is 50/50.
First 50 consist of people like myself: post-Soviet Jewish immigrants to US. Probability of them being anti-communist is very high. Exceptions: elderly people, over 70, usually on various social support programs, who internalized socialist mantras (“state will take care of you”, “government official knows better”, “don’t stick up”, “I read in a newspaper that Democrats are for poor people, and Republicans want to leave us w/o medical assistance”, etc) They lived through a very difficult life, never had a chance to be individuals, to straighten their back; I pity them.
Another age group of post-Soviet immigrants that might be liberal are kids who went to American HS or American college: those share the same traits, went through same indoctrination as American-born kids in the same category, so it would be incorrect to single them out by incident of their birth. It is one of the challenges of raising children that immigrants face more that natives – to counter influence of school and “cool radical chic” friends. Parents quickly become inadequate in their kids’ eyes – they don’t speak English well, they don’t orient themselves in society wqell, they don’t seem to be immediately successful and confident – kids, like dogs, stick to confidence and aplomb – while on the other hand, here’s all those educated self-important professors, in school and college, and even if you don’t agree with everything they say, you don’t show it, or you’ll be an outcast. So – yes, this group more often than not is expected to be liberal/leftie, but not because they are Jewish – because they went through college indoctrination and haven’t thought for themselves yet.
The other part of 50% are native American Jews. Here I don’t feel equipped to make universal observation: I never lived in any other city in US but NYC, and this is one leftie city. 85% of all residents, be they Jews or Hindu or Lutherans or Italians or Irish or Puerto-Ricans are voting Dem, so probability that an American Jew will be a leftie is almost 100%. And yet, I met many exceptions to that rule – they were always pleasant surprises, and I tend to cherish those acquaintances more, even when in other aspects they might be not the kind of people I’d normally feel on the same wave – but this one side of character weights more, in my eyes, so I commit myself to sticking with them.
If I knew how things are in other parts of the country, I’ll feel more certain in drawing conclusions; I’m not.
Hope that answers your inquiry, OB.
Occam.
I studied psychology some decades ago. It’s not for me. If I tell a person to do such and such to solve a problem and they don’t do it, I’m likely to tell them that I told them what to do and they didn’t do it. After that, I’m out of tools.
So, I would be a lousy distance popschrynk.
But I’d be inclined to try.
What proportion of your friend’s views, do you think, are related to his view of himself, as opposed to his view of the real world?
R.Aubrey: “Okay, there’s a difference.
What difference does the difference make?”
Ultimately? Jack squat.
Those we call “liberal” act as enablers for the leftists. “Liberals” are just inconsistent (“unprincipled”) leftists — they object to some of the results of leftism, but not the the leftism reasoning that leads to those results. That is, there is no principle to their objection to leftism, and so the leftists can always reel them in, later, in preparation for the next leftist outrage against humanity.
Liberals are and have been morphing into radical leftist in case nobodys noticed. Followers of fashionable thought to replace their abandonment of a transcended creator, they have no defense against the Pop Culture ridicule and peer pressure tactics that leftist have employed to bring them in the fold.
I recently attended a speech given by an elderly Holocaust survivor, he was the only survivor in his family. He was sent to France and managed to eventually flee to NYC, as a young teen on his own. Amazing.
He is an ardent Obama supporter. His speech contained several glowing paragraphs about the greatness of Obama and how thrilled he is to be in America with Obama as its president.
Jaw, meet floor.
Boots, the guy may have been showing the effects of age. Also holocaust survivors have internal damages we cannot even imagine.
I would not want to trouble him by asking for a comment on today’s Krauthammer essay. The great Charles points out, with a deftness no one can match. how Obama is endangering freedom and security the world over. I doubt that the holocaust survivor would want to see that the groundwork for another holocaust is being laid, having not recovered from the last one. He, like most of the world apparently, is in denial. At least he has an excuse.
Boots.
The only rational–sort of–reason I can think of is that FDR and Truman, under whom he was liberated and came to this country were democrats.
That doesn’t make much sense, but nothing else comes close.
Let me see. SEIU mobs equal or don’t equal Brown Shirts?
Israel is supported by us…or not?
Anti-Semitism is growing on campuses and in the zero administration, or it is not?
Vicious enemies of Jews everywhere–Islamofascists–are appeased by zero, or resisted?
Huh. Don’t get it.
Boots, I think that rather than an intellectual examination of positions, or even researching what a party’s actions have been, most liberals are reacting off the kind of people they seem to be, the tribe they are from. The Nazi elite was made up of artists, scientists, drawing heavily on German poets and philosophers – Fichte, Nietzsche, Heidigger. But the persecuted Jews didn’t see those people – they saw the police and military. And not the usual local police and soldiers, but that selected group who were less ideological, but liked being cruel. Special troops, Einsatzgruppen, SS, etc, made up much of the contact. So all the illusions that prevented them from believing that the ovens existed – good civilised Germans would never do a thing like that – could be maintained. Those sorts of people were good and civilised and just happened to get caught up in this Nazi madness, but they were still college professors and musicians and well-read. The myth persisted that it was those others – bullies and tormenters one finds in any culture – who were the real Nazis and the real danger. They perceived the situation in reverse – it was the elites with real hatred for Jews specifically who channeled the bigotry of the less-educated to that specific target.
The Holocaust survivors brought that here. A fear of the parts of American culture that was pro-military, tended to go into police work, didn’t listen to classical music or read philosophers – they perceived them as the same dangerous people who sent them to the camps or executed a million in Ukraine. Orthodox and Conservative Jews who might have considerable agreement with Republican positions simply can’t get past the idea that there is something dangerous – to Jews personally and all slightly-different people in general – about Sarah Palin or Christian evangelicals. They are sure that we are just the sort of people who can be turned into Jew-killers.
Well, the people that they physically saw, that put people on the trains, were guards in the camps – that’s who they saw. They didn’t see the people who ordered the camps built, who organised the Einsatzgruppen. For those objectively viewing from the outside, that seems a simple distinction to make. It isn’t to those who have been at the mouth of Hell. And they would quite automatically transfer that us/them culture to their children: everyone has an us/them mechanism, awaiting only its shaping by our culture.
So the children of the survivors, associating with the liberal Jews who had other reasons for hating conservatives, would simply conclude that Obama’s opponents are – almost by definition – potentially the most dangerous people in the country. That he defeated them in an election and has discomfited them with his legislation would make him seem – – – – the strong horse. The protector.
Assistant,
Interesting thesis.
I’d say, in this country, the automatic respect given–or expected, anyway–to Ivy League grads puts them in the category of those “elites” in Germany who put the no-necks on the streets.
Be interesting to find out the SES and the religion of the Righteous of WW II.
My guess is…that would be embarrassing.
Richard, his view of himself is healthy, as is his view of the real world. The liberal politics come from growing up in Minnesota, which of course has always strongly featured that Scandinavian proclivity for socialism. Despite being an Obamanaut, he rails unbidden against California’s fiscal policies (if you’ll pardon the exaggeration) and the nefarious influence of the public sector unions in causing them. In his personal dealings he is the soul of probity and prudence. So the juxtaposition of these facts with his politics underscores the paradox he represents, and why I think I can convert him. He was inculcated with liberal views in his youth, and has never really examined them. For this reason, I hope to turn him into the Scandinavian answer to neo-neocon!
Occam.
Taking your word for your good works and the prospects therefore.
However, my question had to with whether your friend’s self-image is supported in some way or proportion by being one of the liberals because the liberals have….(fill in virtues lacked by conservatives.)
Which, of course, he would lose if he left the fold entirely.
“If we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity.” Daniel Webster…
awesome commentary guys…
Tatanya:
“There is disproportionate involvement of Jews into everything, from medicine to finance to information technologies to philosophy to law to theological studies – and into politics.
Unfortunately, unlike the other areas, we’ve always been lousy at politics, from King Saul’s day onward!
“Who’s the conservative Jewish equivalent of Soros? Of Peter Lewis? Of Trotsky? Of Abbie Hoffman? Of Andy Stern? Of the Pritzkers? Of Streisand?”
Krauthammer, Prager, Medved, Podhoretz (pere et fils), Wolfowitz, Abrams, Feith, Perle, Kristol, the late, lamented Ron Silver . . .
F:
It’s not that they believe in lies, it’s that the lies are truth to them. The only explanation I’ve ever been able to come up with is that they live in a parallel uniiverse!
Oops! I meant to insert Occam’s Beard before the second quote.
Richard Saunders:
… and to spell my name correctly,
let alone – close the quote mark, so it would not appear that I share your opinion that we are lousy in politics.
If you noticed, in my comment @ 6:52 I mentioned “neocons” [curtsy towards our host], too.
Funny, how easily the world forgets (or rather, manipulates the stock images for its momentary consumption) – forgets that Jews were for a long time the poster boys for “unrestricted, cruel capitalism”; literally – poster boys, caricatures. The images of Jewish bankers – founders of contemporary monetary system, the blood circulating in capitalist economy, were mocked and despised for exactly that. How more anti-socialist could you be than a universally-hated Jewish banker seating on a pile of gold?
Oh… and reading through again, i noticed a trend…
that those who have some experience or are close to the reality of the history, ie. they cant imagine it being less than what it was, and realize the descriptions are less, not more, are all in a common line with at least entertaining and examining what is going on.
unlike some before, who didnt have that experience, who didnt belive it, it didnt match their education, they were always singing a different tune.
the ones with a common knowlege, are all somewhat ont he same page. nervous as to what can happen, realizing what it is, and that the outcome is not much in our control, and quite unpredictable.
that its a ball that should not be in play..
Assistant Village Idiot said,
The Nazi elite was made up of artists, scientists, drawing heavily on German poets and philosophers… But the persecuted Jews didn’t see those people – they saw the police and military… that selected group who were less ideological, but liked being cruel…The myth persisted that it was …bullies and tormenters one finds in any culture – who were the real Nazis and the real danger….They didn’t see the people who ordered the camps built, who organised the Einsatzgruppen. For those objectively viewing from the outside, that seems a simple distinction to make. It isn’t to those who have been at the mouth of Hell.
————————————————
Thank you for your thoughtful post. This is something I had not thought through before now. Obviously the elite in German society were the ones who made the decisions on how that society would be reordered, who would live and who must die. The enforcers would necessarily be from the working class. Jews who were lucky to escape to America might associate the working class here with enforcement of the elimination of the jews.
It was just painful to listen to this kindly old man, who lost his whole family in the Holocaust, as he praised Obama. Knowing how Obama’s mentors are men like Rev. Wright and Louis Farrakhan, men who absolutely despise jews.
AVI, the association of American Jews with left-wing politics didn’t start with the Holocaust, however. It most notably began at the turn of the 20th century, with immigration from Eastern Europe after the pogroms of 1905. The Democrats probably have benefited largely from being the more left-wing of the two parties, and therefore the more attractive philosophically.
One could make the converse argument that one might expect Holocaust survivors to identify with the American military, who after all were most directly responsible for saving them.
Occam’s Beard, one more fact about this elderly Holocaust survivor is that, after he had been safely here in America for several years, he was drafted into the US Army. By that time, he spoke English, as well as his native German, and French. He participated first hand in liberating his country alongside American GI’s. Being tri-lingual, he interrogated captured enemy troops. He should know better than to be a man of the left.
I would be happy to have dinner with the commenters on this thread. The insight on display is impressive, and it clearly has its origin in both experience and study.
But perhaps we are using the wrong tools if we believe facts and logic will make much of a difference, but the mainspring that drives this behavior turns out to be mainly irrational. What could be so powerful that it blots out rationality and creates free-floating anxieties and even fear and prejudice against other people? The more I see of the world, the more I think it is the desire for higher status and the fear of alienation and exclusion (which could be thought of as the extreme in loss of status).
Being alienated and excluded is dangerous, as you become the prey of everyone else. Therefore, one must be a member of a tribe which works to defend the interests of the tribe against everyone else. And yet jostling for higher status within the tribe or for the tribe to jostle for higher status against other tribes is also dangerous, as the inevitable result is resentment and envy.
This dynamic is inherently unstable and anxiety-producing. For this reason, we will never see the End of History, and the Hegelian Singularity in which we achieve total alignment between The People and The State will remain forever out of reach. This is in the very nature of humanity. Anxiety never goes away.
The Leninist heresy, which the Nazis adopted, is to believe the actions of an enlightened elite can bring about this Hegelian End of Days. The result is a kind of diabolical Millenarianism that works to eliminate the anxieties that come from being human in society. The destination always turns out to be the gulag or Jonestown, murder or suicide.
AVI,
let’s continue your thought:
it was those others – bullies and tormenters one finds in any culture – who were the real Nazis and the real danger. They perceived the situation in reverse – it was the elites with real hatred for Jews specifically who channeled the bigotry of the less-educated to that specific target.
If one finds bullies and tormenters in any culture it follows that one will find them here in US, too – and that the pragmatic, church-going, patriarchal paterfamilias here, just like in Germany, can in split-second turn into blood-thirsty mob – and feel not only justified but righteous about his deeds. Don’t tell me it’s impossible – it was happening here in the 30s, too, parallel with Germany. So these fears are not particularly ridiculous, are they?
Also, I think you underestimate european Jews; what makes you think they (we) put the blame ONLY on the executors, and not on the instigators? They are all guilty – the designers of horror as well as the willful and methodical implementers of it.
But when you’re faced with two dangers: a college professor and a thug with a stick, you act differently with each: you debate a college professor and you pay off or run from a thug – or you arm yourself against him, like Israel does now.
Oblio, it indeed would be grand to get together for dinner with the commenters on this blog.
Tatyana,
How do you tell Friend from Foe? There are significant costs associated with being wrong in either direction. The danger of treating a Foe as a Friend is obvious. If you treat potential Friends as Foes, you might fall victim to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Oblio – Occam’s Beard already answered that:
“gradually feel out someone’s views, until I’m pretty sure they’re simpatico, before dropping shields”
And even after that “trust but verify”
And after that “look at actions, not words” Etc, etc.
Bob, re: dinner party: should I start working on the menu? I’ll have to get more chairs…
Tatyana:
Sorry! BTW, I have actually heard anti-Semites refer to “Jewish Banker Communists.” I used to think that was impossible, then I read about George Soros.
Richard: oh, that’s part of a wider category: “limousine liberal bankers” (or “Caviar socialists”, as the French call them. Nominal belonging to Jewish ancestry has nothing to do with that.